I curled my fingers in Cascade’s neck fur, feeling him tense under my grip.
“Soon, boy,” I whispered, and he whined, earning a glance from Delight.
“Cas is coming with me,” she said, and named four others to travel with them. “Come here, boy.”
I let go of his neck, and he glanced up at me in half reproach.
“I have to get…” I glanced over at Delight, not wanting to pre-empt her decision.
“Mack,” she said. “Your team gets the easy part. Mack’s the highlight of the auction, so he’s going last. Boy was just an appetizer.”
Was?
She caught my look.
“Hammer just fell.”
Turning away, she divided the team, sending four with Pritchard after Tens, and four others with me, Scarpil amongst them. It was hard to watch Cascade bounding in Delight’s wake, harder when I realized he had no leash holding him back, but was running free. It meant the two of them were in each other’s heads, and I didn’t like the idea of Cascade being that close.
“Suck it up, princess,” Delight snapped, and then she was gone, her mind switching to just how much ground they had to cover and how fast if they were to reach Rohan before the shuttle took him into orbit.
Fuck.
I needed to check where I was in relation to Mack’s cell, and I needed to be moving that way before Tens was sold off and the wolves took Mack to the dais.
“I can do the checking.” The voice in my head was new, but it wasn’t alone, and I realized Delight had tuned me in with the rest of the team without telling me. Great… Fucking fantastic.
That thought drew a few raised eyebrows, but I ignored them. They couldn’t be any worse than the wolf pack, right? More raised eyebrows, but I didn’t have time.
“Please do,” I said, glad I wouldn’t be holding them up, by having to stop and do reconnaissance in my head.
Delight had clearly thought of everything. Lucky me.
We hit the outer walls of the compound with no difficulty at all, and I had a momentary doubt that we’d be able to get in past the guards—right up until my ‘scout’ took out the external cameras with a looping feed that told them all approaches were clear. After that, the rest of us went over the wall and into the exercise yard in the centre of the holding cells.
That should have been a lot harder than it was, but the wolves had obviously stretched their resources holding a last-minute auction, and my systems-hacking team-mate was going through their security cams and alarms like a knife through butter.
“Huh,” he said. “Never been called that before—and hurry, because what I’ve done ain’t pretty.”
It made me want to stop and look, but I took him at his word. We hit the entry to the cell block where Mack was being held, Scarpil first through the door, our hacker had unlocked and opened—and me, hot on his heels.
“Time to get hyped,” he said, and I realized the stims hadn’t kicked in.
“What the…”
“Something new,” he said. “Not the best time to test it.”
He wasn’t kidding. I shrugged and bared my teeth in a smile that wasn’t.
“You got Mack’s gear?”
“Yup.”
“I’ll introduce you—” but that was as far as I got before the feeds showed us the door at the other end of the corridor opening. “Fuck.”
I began to run.
“Change of plan. You get Mack. I’ll take care of those assholes.”
Pretty sure he made a grab for me as I slipped past him. A soft chorus of ‘fucks’ followed in my wake, but bootsteps followed, too. That was good. I pulled the first stun grenade from its pouch and activated it, sliding to a stop as I hit the corner. I took enough time for a quick peek, and saw a small squad of wolves had stopped outside Mack’s cell, but hadn’t opened the door, yet.
“Hey, assholes!” I yelled, and pitched the grenade.
A startled yip, and thunderstorm of growls was cut short by the grenade going off, but I didn’t wait. Anyone still standing was going back down. The team followed, and I headed down the corridor at a run, pulling a stun baton off my belt.
I’d have preferred a blade, but Delight had vetoed the suggestion.
“We don’t have to kill everything we meet,” she’d said, and I’d felt my jaw drop.
It was so out of kilter with the image I had of her that I hadn’t quite known what to do.
“Stun batons,” she’d said. “We don’t want to make them any more of an enemy than they need to be.”
Riiiight.
The four I’d rolled the grenade into, stayed down, and they didn’t look so good. I registered just how much they were out of it as I hurdled the nearest unmoving form. Didn’t register the open door to Mack’s cell, until I’d passed it. Didn’t stop when I did, either.
Grenade must have been more powerful than I thought…or the door weaker. Yeah. It could always have been that.
“Cutter!”
I grinned. Mack sounded like he was just fine. I heard the sound of his bare feet against the cell’s floor, but didn’t stop—I could hear more wolves coming.
“You know someone’s going to have to drag her ass back, don’t you?” he said, and I could only hope he was talking to Scarpil.
It sounded like the rest of the team were already on my tail, whether to drag it back the way we’d come, or because they needed to help clear us a way out of here, I didn’t know. I didn’t care, either; the wolves had sent reinforcements.
I didn’t bother drawing the Blazer, Glazer or any more grenades. After all, where was the fun in any of that? I could take these furry bastards on with one hand tied behind my back. Not that I wanted to. I mean, if I had
